The high-risk oncogenic human papillomavirus (HPV) has developed mechanisms for evasion of the immune system, favoring the persistence of the infection. The chronic inflammation further contributes to the progression of tissue injury to cervical cancer. The programmed cell death protein (PD-1) after contacting with its ligands (PD-L1 and PD-L2) exerts an inhibitory effect on the cellular immune response, maintaining the balance between activation, tolerance, and immune cell-dependent lesion. We evaluated 295 patients exhibiting or not HPV infection, stratified according to the location (injured and adjacent non-injured areas) and severity of the lesion (benign, pre-malignant lesions). Additionally, we investigated the role of the promoter region PDCD1 -606G>A polymorphism (rs36084323) on the studied variables. PD-1 and PDCD1 expression were evaluated by immunohistochemistry and qPCR, respectively, and the PDCD1 polymorphism was evaluated by nucleotide sequencing. Irrespective of the severity of the lesion, PD-1 levels were increased compared to adjacent uninjured areas. Additionally, in cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) I, the presence of HPV was associated with increased (P = 0.0649), whereas in CIN III was associated with decreased (P = 0.0148) PD-1 levels, compared to the uninjured area in absence of HPV infection. The PDCD1 -606A allele was rare in our population (8.7%) and was not associated with the risk for development of HPV infection, cytological and histological features, and aneuploidy. In contrast, irrespective of the severity of the lesion, patients exhibiting the mutant PDCD1 -606A allele at single or double doses exhibited increased protein and gene expression when compared to the PDCD1 -606GG wild type genotype. Besides, the presence of HPV was associated with the decrease in PDCD1 expression and PD-1 levels in carriers of the -606 A allele presenting severe lesions, suggesting that other mediators induced during the HPV infection progression may play an additional role. This study showed that increased PD-1 levels are influenced by the -606G>A nucleotide variation, particularly in low-grade lesions, in which the A allele favors increased PDCD1 expression, contributing to HPV immune system evasion, and in the high-grade lesion, by decreasing tissue PD-1 levels.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the major pathogen for cervical lesions. The evasion mechanism of the immune response and persistence of HPV infection can be influenced by polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes associated with transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP), which may change the peptide binding affinity or the TAP expression impacting the efficiency of peptide transport in the secretory pathway, and the presentation of peptides to cytotoxic T lymphocytes. This study aimed to evaluate the role of the TAP1 and TAP2 polymorphisms, TAP1, and TAP2 genes expressions, and protein levels in cervical cells presenting different degrees of pre-cancerous lesions in 296 immunocompetent women infected or not by HPV. TAP SNPs were genotyped by Sanger sequencing, and gene expression by real-time PCR. Aneuploidy was determined by DNA index using flow cytometry. TAP-1 and TAP-2 tissue expressions were evaluated by immunohistochemistry. The Asp697Gly SNP of TAP1 presented a risk for cellular aneuploidy (P=0.0244). HPV+ women had higher TAP-2 mRNA (P=0.0212) and protein (P<0.0001) levels. The TAP2D and TAP2E haplotypes were associated with the risk for aneuploidy and pre-cancerous lesions. In conclusion, nucleotide variability at the peptide binding region of peptide transporter genes, particularly of the TAP2 gene, may influence the HPV-peptide transportation from the cytosol to the endoplasmic reticulum, increasing the susceptibility to the development of high-grade cervical lesions.

HLA-G is a nonclassical histocompatibility class I molecule that plays a role in immune vigilance in cancer and infectious diseases. We previously reported that highly soluble HLA-G (sHLA-G) levels in the bone marrow were associated with a high blood cell count in T-acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a marker associated with a poor prognosis. To understand the posttranscriptional HLA-G gene regulation in leukemia, we evaluated the bone marrow microRNA profile associated with the HLA-G bone marrow mRNA expression and sHLA-G bone marrow levels in children exhibiting acute leukemia (B-ALL, T-ALL, and AML) using massively parallel sequencing. Ten differentially expressed miRNAs were associated with high sHLA-G bone marrow levels, and four of them (hsa-miR-4516, hsa-miR-486-5p, hsa-miR-4488, and hsa-miR-5096) targeted HLA-G, acting at distinct HLA-G gene segments. For qPCR validation, these miRNA expression levels (ΔCt) were correlated with HLA-G5 and RREB1 mRNA expressions and sHLA-G bone marrow levels according to the leukemia subtype. The hsa-miR-4488 and hsa-miR-5096 expression levels were lower in B-ALL than in AML, while that of hsa-miR-486-5p was lower in T-ALL than in AML. In T-ALL, hsa-miR-5096 correlated positively with HLA-G5 and negatively with sHLA-G. In addition, hsa-miR-4516 correlated negatively with sHLA-G levels. In AML, hsa-miR-4516 and hsa-miR-4488 correlated positively with HLA-G5 mRNA, but the HLA-G5 negatively correlated with sHLA-G. Our findings highlight the need to validate the findings of massively parallel sequencing since the experiment generally uses few individuals, and the same type of leukemia can be molecularly quite variable. We showed that miRNA’s milieu in leukemia’s bone marrow environment varies according to the type of leukemia and that the regulation of sHLA-G expression exerted by the same miRNA may act by a distinct mechanism in different types of leukemia.